Plant Your Ass in the Ground

This is a photo from last year at the Advent vigils at BIW. Today is the last one for this season.  We have no snow yet - climate change has come to Maine.  

Years ago I read a book called 'The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's original political operative' by Miles Copeland.  If memory serves me right he didn't confess much (as in atone for your sins) - he mostly bragged about his vile operations.

The thing I remember most was that Copeland quit the CIA (he was assigned to the Middle East following WW II) and went to work spying on and destabilizing that region on behalf of corporate interests - particularly big oil.  He told how he'd waltz into a particular oil-rich nation and begin operations that the CIA was not even aware of.

This was a seminal book for me in that I learned much more about how foreign policy has been privatized - basically Congress and the White House are marginal factors in determining and carrying out endless war on behalf of corporate interests.  The politicians are hired as two-bit actors to sell the policies back home that are created in the gilded halls of Wall Street.

The thing I loved about being in Jeju Island and Okinawa is that the people in full resistance there are very clear that their governments have no interest in peace and justice.  While we were sitting on the ground in front of Marine Camp Schwab one protest leader at the 'No US base in Henoko' daily occupation told us to plant our asses in the pavement.  I loved the expression because it reflected their understanding that we must be rooted in our resistance.  To be rooted we must first give up illusions and as the song says: "Like a tree planted by the water, we shall not be moved."

I heard the same protest leader call the government in Tokyo a "mafia" regime.  I also heard that word used in Sicily when I was recently there as well.  The same can be said of Washington - when corporations run the government that means we have fascism - which in my mind is just the same as the mafia.  It's organized crime.

When I was a kid I wanted to work for the FBI to fight organized crime.  I wanted to help end the stereotype of all Italians being part of the Mafia. I sent away for a FBI correspondence course when I was about 13 years old - I figured I'd get a head start - the Boy Scout motto was 'Be prepared'.  I learned that every criminal has an MO - Modus Operandi - a way of repeating the same bad behavior over and over again.  That's what endless war is all about - it's the corporate MO and they will continue to do the same thing until we stop them.  To do that we have to plant our asses in the ground.

There is no way around it.  You either get real or we (and the future generations) are finito.  Simple as that.....